Excerpt: White Feathers by Susan Lanigan
- Archaeolibrarian
- May 2
- 7 min read
Book details:
Book Title: White Feathers
Series: White Feathers, Book#1
Author: Susan Lanigan
Publication Date: 21/3/2025
Publisher: Idée Fixe Press
Pages:398
Any Triggers: Abortion (non-graphic), Death
@cathie.dunn1 @thecoffeepotbookclub
@susanlanigan_books @thecoffeepotbookclub
"Anti-war and anti-patriarchy without ever saying so - a bravura performance of effortless elegance" - Irish Echo in Australia
In 1913, Irish emigrée Eva Downey receives a bequest from an elderly suffragette to attend a finishing school. There she finds friendship and, eventually, love. But when war looms and he refuses to enlist, Eva is under family and social pressure to give the man she loves a white feather of cowardice. The decision she eventually makes will have lasting consequences for her and everyone around her.
Journey with Eva as she battles through a hostile social order and endeavours to resist it at every turn.
Add to Goodreads | StoryGraph | Smashbomb | BookBub
Confidences Exchanged
Eva is attending a local concert in a church in Eastbourne, with her headmistress Miss Hedges and another student. But somebody else is there too…
‘If you don’t mind,’ Eva said to her two companions, ‘I would like to get some air.’
They didn’t mind but did not move either, so Eva got up and slid past them, out to the small vestibule. The wind made its way in there through the door, stronger than the draught inside, making her shiver. She was about to go outside all the same, liking the strong wind even when it was cold, when a familiar figure slipped through the entrance and joined her, coat tails flapping.
‘Hallo, Miss Downey!’ Mr Shandlin said cheerfully. ‘Didn’t know you were a church haunter, or did Miss Hedges get you to come along for company? Miss Williams is a young lady of irreproachable character, I don’t doubt, but I would not choose her for her skill in rhetoric. Or any other conversational skill, now I come to think of it, but perhaps that’s excessively uncharitable of me.’
‘It is rather, sir. I chose to come. I like choirs.’
‘Really? I didn’t know, but it shouldn’t surprise me. I like them too, which only makes it more painful that I have to attend their concerts with that lot.’
‘Shouldn’t you be attending to them now, sir?’
Mr Shandlin raised his eyebrows. ‘I am boring you already, Miss Downey. I must be improving with age.’
‘No, no, sir, not at all.’ Eva coloured. ‘I was just wondering how … manageable they are.’
‘Oh, they’re beasts,’ Mr Shandlin remarked off-handedly. ‘They are not fit to be left for five minutes. But if I worried about that I would worry about how these boys will eventually be running the British Empire – and that would keep me awake at night in cold sweats. Are you all right, Miss Downey? Is there something wrong with your coat?’
Eva had just remembered that the book was in her pocket and that if she didn’t do something quickly, he would spot it there and perhaps wonder why she was in the habit of carrying it around on her person. ‘No! No, I’m all right, thank you.’ She was abrupt, but not abrupt enough, for it was clear from his glance that he had indeed spotted the volume. His face broke out into another of those unexpected smiles.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘the Brooke.’
‘I—’ Eva blushed with embarrassment.
‘Tell me, which poem do you prefer?’
‘Not the one where he’s getting sick on the boat, that’s for sure.’
Mr Shandlin thought for a moment, then his brow cleared. ‘Oh, that one. Well, I disagree with you. Do you really think poetry is just hearts and flowers? Have you not read the Iliad ?’
‘Well, I—’ Eva broke off. Inside the church, the choir were starting again. A chord sounded on the organ, presumably to give the choir their notes.
‘Better go back in,’ Mr Shandlin said, turning.
Eva shook her head. ‘Wait … listen …’
She recognised the piece immediately. Palestrina’s Sicut Cervus, in four parts. Voice after voice overlapped, a series of waves, impersonal and clear as an announcement in a public square, an announcement that would carry through the streets, divine and distant. The music overwhelmed the singers, grasping them with something more than the sum of their parts. Eva was caught in this new ecstatic carousel and became quite lost because she saw beyond it to something she had tried to see for the past seven years: her mother Angela’s face, lifted away from her, the sun shining on the beads she threaded through her fingers. Just for a moment.
Ita desiderat anima mea ad te Deus. She was crying, she knew it, but she did not care. The voices rose and fell, rose and fell. She remembered where she was, and that Mr Shandlin was watching her. Out of the blurred corner of her eye she could see his raven shadow in the doorway, unmoving. It was very unusual for him to be so still. She pulled out her handkerchief and rubbed at her cheeks. When she looked in his direction again, she saw that he was indeed regarding her – in a fixed, odd way.
Then he said, in a not altogether even tone, ‘Have I caused you distress?’
‘No, Mr Shandlin,’ Eva said, folding her handkerchief and putting it away. ‘It is nothing to do with you. I forgot myself. Forgive me, please.’
‘You’ve done nothing for me to forgive,’ he said, ‘but I wonder what is troubling you.’
‘I was thinking of my mother. She loved music. I have this recurring dream about her, and it’s always in a church.’ Now she had started, Eva could not stop. ‘She died when I was five years old. Whenever I have the dream, she turns to me, and where I should see her face, all I can see is a blank. The more I try and remember, the further the memories flee. Even my dreams won’t let me have her.’ She stopped abruptly. Why did she do things like that, tell things when she should be discreet? It was unwomanly and showed a lack of restraint.
‘I am very sorry.’ He was gentle. Then, ‘I know what it’s like.’
Eva looked at him questioningly.
‘Twelve years ago, I lost my brother.’
‘My sincerest condolences, sir.’ To her own ears, the words sounded flat and insincere, but he did not seem to mind.
‘Thank you. It was during the South African war. He was killed in a guerrilla ambush near Tweefontein. They attacked when he was in one of the blockhouses and … well, he was unlucky that day. Or so it said in the letter they sent my mother. He died on Christmas Day.’
Eva tried to imagine what it would be like to read such news in a letter, or in a telegram. How someone’s face would change as they read the words. What a terrible thing to happen to a family! Her arm began to ache again.
‘When you said, “My dreams won’t let me have her”,’ he continued, ‘I knew straightaway what you meant. My dreams do let me see him – sometimes even speak to him. But I can never have his company again. Part of you just stops and never goes on. It’s still raw, that’s the devil of it.’ He spoke these words levelly but directed his gaze entirely upwards, to the roof.
Eva was dumbstruck, her heart full of sudden, sweet pain. He understood all too well, and it hurt. Something broke loose in her like a raging river. Her next question tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop herself. ‘What is your name?’
He was startled out of his reverie. ‘My … pardon me? You mean my first name?’
‘Yes.’
‘Christopher. Why?’
‘N-no reason.’ She wished the floor would fling up its tiles, form a quick hole and swallow her up. What had she been thinking, asking him his name like that? He would think her quite cheeky.
‘Do you plan to use it on me, Miss Downey?’
Oh, God, he was smirking. Time to pull up the drawbridge. But even as the thought crossed her mind, he noticed the change in her and suddenly pointed at her arm. ‘You’re doing it again.’
‘Doing … what?’
‘That thing you do. You grasp your arm with your hand and shrink away, as if someone were about to attack you. No, don’t deny it, I’ve seen you do it. In class! Several times! It disconcerts me. Do I frighten you?’ he said, with a smile.
‘I’m not frightened.’ Eva let her arm fall to her side.
‘Then … what is it?’
Oh, God, Eva thought, please don’t.‘I was injured.’ The words came out before she could stop herself.
‘How?’ His eyes bored in on her, black as obsidian in the half-light. Eva could not answer him, could not think of a casual-sounding excuse. Say something of no consequence, that was all she had to do, and she couldn’t manage it.
‘How,’ he repeated, ‘were you injured?’
There was no more looking at the roof now, or past the back of her head. No, now he was full-on staring at her, his lips parted as if he were about to say something but could not quite form the words. Her skin felt prickly, and her heart began to knock about unsteadily in her chest.
The night when Catherine found out about the article in The New Feminist. The night when she found out about everything.
Susan Lanigan’s first novel White Feathers, a tale of passion, betrayal and war, was selected as one of the final ten in the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2013, and published in 2014 by Brandon Books. The book won critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the UK Romantic Novel of the Year Award in 2015. This edition is a reissue with a new cover and foreword.
Her second novel, Lucia’s War, also concerning WWI as well as race, music and motherhood, was published in June 2020 and has been named as the Coffee Pot Book Club Honourable Mention in the Modern Historical Book of the Year Award.
Susan lives by the sea near Cork, Ireland, with her family.
Author Links:
Website: https://susanlanigan.com
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/author/B00MTKLNLO
Tour hosted by: The Coffee Pot Book Club
Thank you so much for hosting Susan Lanigan today, with an amazing excerpt from her evocative novel, White Feathers.
Take care,
Cathie xx
The Coffee Pot Book Club